wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

On Demand

Program Schedule

Topics

Radiolab / October 09, 2007

Radiolab

Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Previous Episode | Next Episode

  • Where Am I?

    OK. Maybe you're in your desk chair. You're in your office. You're in New York, or Detroit, or Timbuktu. You're on planet Earth.

    But where are you, really?

    This week Radio Lab tries to find out where you are. This hour: stories of people whose brains and bodies have lost each other. We ask how does your brain keep track of your body? We'll examine the bond between brain and body and look at what happens when it breaks. We begin with a century-old mystery: why do many amputees still feel their missing limbs? We speak with a neuroscientist who solved the problem with a magician’s trick: an optical illusion. We continue with the story of a butcher who suddenly lost his entire sense of touch. And we hear from pilots who lose consciousness and suffer out-of-body experiences while flying fighter jets.

    But first, magnets. Author and neurologist Oliver Sacks tries to find himself using magnets.

    » Buy Magnets

Phantom Limbs

Warning: this section gets gorey. We'll start off with fatality, trauma, and bear attack. Neurologists Robert Sapolsky and Antonio Damasio weigh in on 19th century philosopher William James, and his theory of emotion (and of bears), which says "emotion is a slave to physiology."

Then we'll look at sensations of feeling that hang on long after the physiology goes away. Radio Lab takes a field trip to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (a collection of medical oddities), and finds a photograph of the severed feet of Civil War soldiers (pictured, on the right.). Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, Washington, D.C., CP 1043.

And then we'll speed back into the present-day to see brain doctor V.S. Ramachandran solve the case of a painful phantom limb. Pain relief by but mere smoke and mirrors.

Review of Damasio's book, The Feeling of What Happens
"What is an Emotion?" by William James

The Butcher's Assistant

There's a sense so essential to our everyday functioning, it is almost impossible to describe beyond... simply being. Or existing, physically. Called proprioception, and sometimes referred to as the sixth sense, it is the sense that the body uses to detect itself. Radio Lab talks to one man and his doctor who have an interesting vantage point for explaining this sense. Ian Waterman (picture at right, seated, during a research trial) can describe this sense so accurately because he is one of the few people in the world to have lost it. Ian and his doctor, Jonathan Cole, pressed themselves into the world's smallest BBC recording booth to talk to us about what Ian doesn't feel.

Cole's book, Pride and a Daily Marathon

Out of Body, Roger

I was there. But I, like, wasn't there. I was floating. I was looking at myself from outside of myself.

If it hasn't happened to you, it's likely happened to somebody you know. And whether or not you believe it, about one in ten people report having had one. "Out of body" experience, it's a dirty word in many circles. Which is perhaps why pilots call it "G-LOC" (gravity-induced loss of consciousness, pronounced "G-lock" not "glok"). Turns out this kind of experience (call it what you want) occurs quite frequently among fighter pilots. Producers Ann Heppermann and Kara Oehler bring us the story. We'll hear from pilots Tim Sestak, and Col. Dan Fulgham on what it's like to lose yourself, unfortunately for us skiddish passenger-types, while flying a plane. Finally we'll hear from Dr. James Whinnery, who simulates G-LOC by placing pilots in giant centrifuges. His research monitors their brain activity as they accelerate to speeds inducing this loss of consciousness. But Doc Whinnery isn't just a scientist, he's a subject. And his research has taken him to some surprising places.

See a picture of a centrifuge